Sheep Guarding Llama

Dominica, Oreo and I slept in as late as we could this morning to recover from the busy Thanksgiving week. That meant that we slept until around nine in the morning which isn’t really all that late. Check out is at eleven so we don’t have a lot of time to pack and get ready to leave the hotel.

We got checked out and took Oreo for his first walk of the day and then Dominica’s friend Jackie and her husband Tim who were at the party last night met us at the hotel and we all went out to Denny’s for lunch. We had a really nice lunch hanging out with them. It is nice to get to see Dominica with her friends from long ago. I know so few of them. It is weird for me to see her with people from her past. She is so bad at keeping in contact with people that there are very few people from very long ago that I know.

After lunch we went back to Frankfort to visit with the Toccos. Min’s parents were not home when we got there so we ran out to Herkimer to shop at the Walmart there while we had the chance. New York Walmarts are so much nicer than the New Jersey ones. Completely different stores. You wouldn’t even know that they are the same chain! We managed to get some Christmas shopping done and it was a good use of our time. We also found a bargain bin copy of the Mario and Luigi RPG for the GBA. It was cheap and looked cute so we checked it out.

We spent a few hours in the afternoon hanging out with Min’s parents and her brother Joe. At six we had to leave to run out to New Hartford to do some quick shopping on our way to Sam and Katie Bono’s house in Clinton. We first hit the big wine store in New Hartford. New Jersey liquor stores are pathetic. Apparently people in New Jersey only drink to get drunk and don’t take any pride in their wine so we are stuck buying out wine in New York and bringing it back with us. We loved the selection at the place that we found and ended up buying two cases of wine so that we wouldn’t have to worry about it again for a while.

We also ran into the Electronics Boutique in the Sangertown Square Mall in New Hartford and hit paydirt with their great selection of used Game Boy Advance games. I managed to get a number of games really cheaply there that I have been unable to find on eBay. We got Riviera (for $15 as opposed to $60 on eBay), the original Legend of Zelda and Final Fantasy Tactics Advance.

We got to Sam and Katie’s house around seven thirty. They just moved into their new house at the same time that we were moving into our new apartment here in Newark. There is quite a bit of contrast between our two places. Our place is tiny and theirs is huge. They are on a hill with a view of Utica but are in the country whereas we are in the heart of the city but with a view of Manhattan. We love their new place though. It is really awesome. They are going to have to buy a lot of furniture to fill that place. They cooked dinner for us and we all hung out for several hours. We had a really nice time visiting.

We got back to Frankfort and it was time for bed for us. Boy are we ever old!

Boy were we tired this morning when we dragged our sorry butts out of bed. Oreo had an early morning appointment with the vet in Ilion so we couldn’t sleep in at all. We had to be up and out quite early to get him there on time.

After the vet visit we drove back to Utica and met dad at the hotel and he drove us out to New Hartford where we met Dominica’s parents at the Hartford Queen diner in the middle of the strip. They had been up since very early doing the Black Friday shopping.

We had a nice breakfast and then dad, Min and I returned to the Hotel Utica and dad took off to go back home. I had some work that had to be done even though today was going to be a vacation day, sort of, there were a lot of people in the UK that didn’t think of it as a holiday and had a lot of work for me to do so I still was rather busy. So Dominica ran out to run errands and stuff while I worked in the hotel.

We are really happy staying at the Hotel Utica. Like I have said before, it is a grand hotel from 1912 that was recently completely refurbished giving it a feel much like our Newark apartment. The lobby is simlpy stunning and the rooms are very nice. I was quite impressed and the wireless worked really well too. And Oreo is allowed to stay with us which is very unusual for a nice hotel of this level. We will be utilizing the Hotel Utica quite a bit in the future, I imagine. It is just so handy and inexpensive.

Around half past three we had to start getting ready to go to Dominica ten year class reunion (Frankfort Schuyler High School Class of 1996.) It took me a really long time to get ready because we forgot to bring a shaver with us and I need to shave my head. So Dominica’s parents grabbed a Gillette Fusion razor for me and I used five blades (that is five blade units each with five actual knife blades on it for a total of twenty five blades) to shave with. It took forever and my head was really soar by the time that I was done. It took almost three hours to cut off all of my hair. That was a really bad idea.

We were fashionably late to the reunion but it was actually just about the right time to show up. Any earlier and we would have just been standing around waiting for things to get going. We had a good time. It was mostly a whirlwind of meeting people that Dominica has mentioned and lots that she hadn’t and trying to attach faces to names. We hung out for several hours until about ten thirty. Then a good number of the classmates headed over to Delmonico’s Steakhouse for some drinks after the party. We didn’t stay there for long. We are old and showing it.

After the party we had to run over to Frankfort to pick up Oreo before going back to the hotel to go to bed. Apparently Dominica was in a mood where everything was very funny as she went up to her parents’ bedroom to get Oreo and both of the dogs were laying in bed and being very cute and popped there heads up together to see who had come for them and apparently Min just stood there laughing for a while and woke up her parents. We didn’t find out about that until later. Joe and I were dying when we heard about that. It was after midnight by the time we got back to the Hotel Utica and got to sleep. Quite a long day for us.

Dominica and I did not wake up nearly as early this morning as we had hoped that we would and when we finally did pull ourselves out of bed and realized that we really had to rush out the door to be able to make it to Frankfort on time for Thanksgiving dinner I got paged out to help at the office. What a crazy morning. So I signed in to work from home and did some work to get them sorted out before we could leave. After that we got ready as quickly as possible and rushed out the door.

We tried to grab a quick breakfast in town before leaving but discovered that nothing, not even McDonalds, was open here on Thanksgiving. Which is sort of cool that all of those people were getting to spend the holidays with their families and had plenty of time to travel to do so but it kind of sucks too having the entire city shut down so that those of us who need to travel have no way to get food of any sort. It seems like Thanksgiving day breakfast wouldn’t be too much of a stretch of someone to be serving even if they closed at eleven or something.

Traffic wasn’t bad this morning at all. We got right out of town and onto the highway and were well underway quite quickly. We stopped in Great Bend, Pennsylvania for gas and a quick bite at the Dunkin Donuts there. We figured that restaurants would stay open in Great Bend as it is a pretty major stopping spot on route 81. Clark’s Summit was our original intended destination for breakfast/lunch but it was very busy when we went past there and we decided that it was not worth fighting the crowds there at all.

We made it to Frankfort in good time and it was barely half past one when we showed up. About an hour after our target time but long before we had been worried that we would arrive. My dad had arrived a little while before and was at the house hanging out.

Thanksgiving Dinner was at Dominica’s grandfather’s house in Frankfort as usual. Dinner started at half past two and we hung out there until it was time for me to head out to Rochester. Dad, Dominica and I drove out to Utica to get settled into the Hotel Utica at six thirty. Dad turned in for the night. Dominica just dropped her stuff and made sure that the room was all set and then drove back to Frankfort to spend the night visiting with her family and I hit the road for Rochester.

I got to Nick Tahou’s in Rochester on Lyle Ave. at a quarter to ten or so but a lot of the gang had all ready arrived by that point. We had a decent turn out this year. This is our tenth anniversary of our Nick Tahou’s Thanksgiving Run! Ten years, that is incredible. I can’t believe that it has been that long. Eight people turned out for this year’s get together. A number of people, at least five, were considering coming and didn’t at the last minute. This year we had Nate, Joe, Jeff, the Relyeas, the Ayers and me. Pretty much the core group who started the tradition. I am pretty sure that Nate, Joe, Josh and I have managed to be there all ten years.

Nate and I were the stragglers and didn’t leave Tahou’s until well after midnight. It was a long and tiring drive back to Utica after all of that food and such a long day of driving. It was about three in the morning when I arrived at the hotel and I was asleep in no time.

Work is winding down in preparation for the long holiday weekend. I found out today that I have four days off in a row!

I was reading some history today and realized that my family bought the ColecoVision in December, 1982 just six months or so before the great Video Game Crash of 1983. It didn’t really occur to me at the time, obviously, but the crash really accounted for why we ended up being so unhappy with the system. We bought near the height of the early frenzy when everyone and their brother was getting into video games and then suddenly everyone was going bankrupt left and right and the whole market collapsed taking Coleco with it.

I managed to get a really good deal on Boktai for the GBA today. Boy am I ever the video game bargain hunter. Our collection of RPG and adventure games for the GBA and the Nintendo DS is getting to be more and more complete.

Work was uneventful – much as you would imagine on Thanksgiving Eve. Everyone is trying to get out of the office to get started on their long holiday weekend. By three in the afternoon the office was all but deserted and by the time I left around six I was practically alone.

I got home and discovered that the Samsung DVD player that I had just ordered two days ago from Amazon had all ready arrived (that would be the free, unexpedited delivery service) as well as Dominica’s new Creative Zen Vision M mp3 and video player. She was hoping that it would arrive before we left for the weekend so that is really cool that it made it just in time.

We spent the evening getting ready and packing. We need to be up pretty early in the morning and on the road so that we can make it for Thanksgiving festivities in Frankfort tomorrow.

Last night I got home a little on the late side but was really in the mood for a Wrap it Up at Food for Life (basically an extremely hearty California Fish Taco) so we ran right over there to get a quick dinner.

Our replacement hall table arrived today from Target (they must have overnighted it since Dominica only got her issues there resolved on Friday evening) and we took some time and got that assembled and placed in the hallway. What a difference that is going to make in the apartment! Now the huge hallway isn’t bare and we have a lot more storage space as well. That is something that we desperately needed.

While we were assembling the table we watched a few episodes of The Thin Blue Line with Rowan Atkinson and then called it a night and played a little bit on our Nintendo DSs from bed. Those really turned out to be a good investment. Who would have guessed?

Someone that I work with was telling me about the Samsung DVD-HD860 DVD player today. I did some research and I believe that this is the same unit that Andy has but his is made by Oppo who use a Samsung transport and I think that this is the underlying system that they use in that unit. The Oppo is better but we expect that you get most of the benefits out of the much less expensive Samsung. The big features of this unit are 720p upconversion, HDMI digital output and the ability to directly play Divx/MPEG-4 videos that are burned to CD or DVD. (For people like my father who have full 1080p displays, they will want the more expensive Samsung DVD-HD960 which does full upconversion to 1080p!)

While I was placing the order I also grabbed the original Christmas in Connecticut and a couple Christmas CDs including Bobby Darren and Sarah McLaughlin. It’s that time of year!

This morning was quite busy. I did some work from home and grabbed a quick breakfast at Food for Life before going into the office. Once there the work load for the whole week was dumped on us and I had to work like crazy after yesterday’s total lull. Funny how that happens so dramatically.

I did some looking on YouTube today in between things and managed to find more Coleco Vision videos from back in the day. This is some classic stuff. You can watch the “How to Beat Video Games” videos for games that I had including Smurfs: Rescue from Gargamel’s Castle and Donkey Kong. It is funny that all of the games that they show on this old video series are ones that I owned. Boy does that stuff bring back memories! It is strange to think how much of my childhood must have been spent playing those games. Be sure to watch the Donkey Kong video because they show the Coleco Vision itself a little bit. This one is choppy but you can watch one of the original Coleco Vision commercials.

Tr0d who posted the Coleco Videos on YouTube is also a Llama Song fan! I discovered a video tour of the final day of the Amiga factory in West Chester, Pennsylvania which might be the location where our Amiga 1000 was manufactured.

Oreo had only a half day at daycare today. He went into work with Dominica this morning and she brought him home during her lunch break. She has to run out and do some shopping after work tonight and is not going to be home until late so I am going home a little on the early side from the office so that I can be with Oreo as early as possible and we will hang out until Dominica gets home. Tomorrow night I have to do some shopping on my way home. So Oreo will only be at daycare for two and a half days this week.

I left the office around five and ran straight home to be with Oreo. He had been sleeping all afternoon and didn’t even seem to notice that he had been alone for several hours. I had plenty of work left to do so I signed on and got back to work. In between tasks I did some light cleaning around the apartment. It is amazing how quickly it becomes a mess again, especially when we have been getting things shipped in on a regular basis.

I grabbed a quick bite at Food for Life in between things that I needed to do for work.

Dad emailed me and let me know that The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap arrived for the Game Boy Advance. My collection of top GBA games is nearly complete! I did some hunting on eBay tonight and got a good price on Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones for the GBA as well. I keep hunting for the bargains. Dominica and I have been playing our Nintendo DSs all of the time and are really getting a lot of value out of them.

We managed to get back to the gym tonight and to get some actual exercise in after taking two days off. Our bodies needed the rest. We aren’t use to this grueling exercise schedule.

I had picked up a Subway sub for Dominica before she got home and she ate that and we watched more of The Thing Blue Line before heading off to bed.